Legal Research And AI: Looking Toward The Future

I read with interest the recent post by my fellow Above the Law columnist, Bob Ambrogi, on a study about the disparity of results found when using various legal research tools. Those findings caught my attention because I’d encountered that very phenomenon when conducting research for this article. As I tested the built-in AI features of Westlaw and LexisNexis, I noticed that identical queries entered into each platform typically led to very different sets of results.

Of course, that’s one of the legal research problems artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to solve. When natural language processing is based not just on the words entered into the search box, but on the past behavior of the user and other users who’ve made similar inquiries, the results should ultimately be more uniform across the board. The idea is that since the results are based on a broad set of data analytics rather than just an analysis of the terms entered, the results will be more precisely aligned to the information that the user was seeking to obtain.